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MAUNA ROA 
AND OTHER POEMS 



MAUNA ROA 

AND 

OTHER POEMS 



BY 

AMES BROOKS 



PRINCETON 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1922 






Copyright 1922, by 
Princetan University Press 

Publisiied 1922 

By the Princeton University Press 

Printed in the United States of America 




DEC -9 1^22 



CiA690535 

.._ /TiAJb^. 1 



TO 
MY MOTHER 

IN 

Her Own Spirit 

OF 

Eternal Youth 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Mauna Roa 9 

To Omar 14 

The Wanderers 15 

Rondeau 16 

Coronel 17 

Sleep 20 

Hymn to Persephone 21 

The Last Voyage 23 

Rhine Maiden 26 

Kitchener ,2"] 

To Gather and to Spend 29 

Contradictions 30 

Lament for Alcimus 31 

The Lorelei .' 32 

Homer 35 

Chickamauga 36 

Mona Lisa Speaks "S* 

Keats in Rome 39 

Courage 40 

Ballad 41 

Glastonbury Tor 44 

From My Window -45 

Salisbury Close 46 

The Knight and the Lady 47 

Ballad of Earl Bowinge 48 

The Seafarer 51 

Friendship 52 

An Epitaph 53 

7 



MAUNA ROA 

All day, along the mountains by the Gate, 
The ocean mists lay like a battle-cloud, 

Rolling their formless phantoms through the strait, 
Wrapping the white-walled city in a shroud. 

All day at anchor in the roads we stood, 

Watching the circling sea-gulls wheel and 
scream, 

Where Sausalito hangs above the flood, 
Dreaming all day her rapt Italian dream. 



Thus we set sail. The harbor heads sank low, 
The iron coast-line where the sea-birds veered; 

The waves took up their music round the bow. 
And south and west into the mists we steered. 

A fearful sea — uncharted — without path — 

Calm with the calm that knows nor gale nor 
snows, 

Bearing the terror of an hidden wrath. 
Majestic in its terrible repose. 

Shoreless and lone — illimitable — ^vast — 
Where all the wastes of ocean take their toll 

Of desolate wave-lashed reef, of alien mast. 
From Honuapo to the austral pole. 



Out of the south, dripping with damp and dew, 
The haunting trade-winds drove the heaving 
seas; 
The magic of the equatorial blue 

Purpling their flanks — and seaweed on their 
knees. 

On — on — southward and south again we bore, 
The isles of gold and summer almost won; 

The old world-wonder there — so close before — 
As still our dripping prow went thundering on. 

«)£ 3fC SfC 3|C ^ 5{« Sf« 

Glory! the Voices send, 
Life! Life and Glory! 
Romance is never dead, 
Your days, nor all their story! 

Beyond this dreaming tide. 
So still as you depart. 
Some haven must abide 
For each adventurous heart! 

9|c :^ j): :): ^ ^ 3|; 

We came to rest among the Thundering Isles, 
Where wayworn ships put in, with courses 
furled. 

Where wan sea-summits rise, a thousand miles 
Beyond the utmost echoes of the world. 

Enchanted island-mountains, rimmed with sand, 
Shorelands of moving waters and of cloud ; 

A world of fronded palms and faery strand, 
And peaks of sunset, mist-capped, thunder- 
browed. 

10 



Down from those vapory cliffs and heights of 
dawn, 

By crag and precipice of livid green, 
The murmurous cataract of filmy lawn. 

Dissolved its music through the rifts between; 

To flow, at length, through flower-bordered 
meads, 

Where still the honey-hearted lotus blooms, 
Which wanderers eat of still— whose pathway leads 

Downward to Lethe and a thousand dooms. 

And Ah ! the haunting light of afternoon 

Flooding that world with far-flung mists of gold, 

As though all life were stilled into a swoon, 
Become a legend, and forever old ; 

As though there played across the purple vales 
The nameless beauty for which dreamers pine, 

As though all tender, dim-remembered tales. 
And all sad things, found here their anodyne. 

***** Jis ^ 

The mild sea-island people on the beach 

Crowned us with scented wreaths of deathless 
flowers. 

We heard the prattle of melodious speech 

Drowning the passage of the languorous hours, 

The flashing breakers on the distant reefs, 
The wild sea-music beating in our ears; 

And dim grew all the memories of our griefs, 
And all we had been in the vanished years. 

II 



Languid and heavy-lidded, half asleep, 

Beneath the shadows of the clambering vine, 

We ate the purple fei, and drained deep 
The ^az^a-bowl, which ran with Circe's wine. 

We tasted all the pleasures of the feast, 
Song and the wanton dance, and wine again ; 

We revelled in the raptures of the beast, 
'Til we forgot the gods that made us men ; 

Forgot the hearths we had been reared beside, 
The white, clean women who had been our 
wives, 
Honor and fame, nobility and pride. 
All that had been immortal in our lives. 
* * * H= * * * 

Then we set sail again — a ship of dream — 
Drifting below that coastline weird and dim, 

A ship asleep upon a drowsy stream, 

Scarce moving toward that lonely ocean rim. 

In frail canoes under the looming land 
Our island friends lay tossing on the swell. 

Waving with mystic play of arm and hand. 
Their blossom-laden branches in farewell. 

The songs they sang — a chorus-chant of ghosts — 
Half-heard and distant, passed us like a dirge 

All day, until at last their phantom coasts 
Lay but a tenuous shadow on the verge. 

3fC ^ 5|6 ^ ^ 3)C ^ 



12 



Enough! the Voices said, 
Of Life and Glory; 
You slumber with the dead, 
And, with you, all your story. 

Then rest, and so outlast 
The sighing of the deep, 
And let the lotus cast 
O'er all its poppied sleep! 
******* 

Then we awoke — ''Ah, lookout, from the mast, 
"Gaze south again 1 Ah ! Captain, trim the 
sail ! 
*Turn back," we cried, "the tempest rises fast; 
"Turn back ! Turn back ! before the compass 
fail !" 

"Our voyage is past; what do we on this deep? 

*'Give us once more our slumber in the sun; 
"Give us forgetfulness and honied sleep; 

"Give us our ease again *til life be done !" 

We swung the vessel in the fading light; 

Shook out each yard of canvas which hung 
furled ; 
And thus returning through the tropic night, 
We beached her as the morning smote the 
world. 



13 



TO OMAiR 

Singer of life and joy and love unsleeping! 

Preacher of rest, of noontide and the sun ! 

Where art thou, now that yesterdays are done ? 
Does Time still haunt thee, some tomorrow creep- 
ing 
Into thy dream? Or art thou, rather, steeping 

Body and soul in slumber, hardly won? 

Tell us, since all thy thread of years was spun. 
What pleasant country hath thee in its keeping? 

Some gentle haven, sunlit and forsaken. 

Perchance thou holdest for us wanderers, 
Brother ; 
Some harbor-valley by no wild winds shaken, 
When we shall rest in earth, the common 
mother ; 
When nevermore shall trump nor tumult waken, 
Nor Love, nor Sleep, nor Death, nor any 
other. 



14 



THE WANDERERS 
The rushing wave is white with foam, 
Leagues, leagues behind — our island home; 
For aye distressed, unsatisfied, 
We tempt again the western tide 
Where'er the winds our bark shall bear; 

Yet Avalon, O Avalon, 
Perchance we may cast anchor there ! 

Her vales sleep in the western sea, 
Where all the haunts of dreamers be ; 
Her marts gleam distant, like a star, 
Where Ogier and where Arthur are; 
Where lovers linger on the stair; 

O Avalon, O Avalon, 
Could we but come to harbor there! 

Our day is dark, we may not see, 
Though there the night as day may be; 
The sunset dies beyond the deep. 
The labor first and then the sleep; 
The gifts of gods are all too rare; 

Yet Avalon, O Avalon, 
Could we but dream for ever there! 



15 



RONDEAU 

Poor autumn leaves ! The winds will roam 
Awhile above your forest tomb, 

Lost in the shadows and the dew; 

Then Earth, the mother that you knew, 
Will ope her arms and take you home. 

For you must die — lie withered — numb, 
Yet will you never sigh in some 

Wild longing for when Spring was new, 
Poor autumn leaves? 

I shall, I know, when earthly hum 

Shall fade afar and I be dumb, 

These verses fail and yet come true. 
And I at length be one of you. 

Alas ! alas ! that death must come. 
Poor autumn leaves ! 



i6 



CORONEL 

''So the scales of fate descended against Ad- 
miral Craddock, who, sailing north from the 
Horn, on Sunday, November first, ran with his 
three cruisers into Von Spee's squadron of five, 
off Coronet on the coast of Chili" 

— Admiralty Report. 

North from the Horn he sailed 

On the long Pacific swell, 
While the rising storm-wind wailed 

O'er the deeps of Coronel; 

Those vast, unsounded deeps, 
Which mark the Chilean main, 

Where the wild sea-wind sweeps 
Up to the Andes' chain. 

Under those iron coasts, 

Looming like fate, there lay, 

A silent line of ghosts, 
The cruisers of Von Spee. 

"Canopus,'* far astern. 
Flashed through the dying day: 

''Hold them awhile and turn ; 
**Hold them an hour at bay! 

"You are but three to five — 

"Outranged by *Gneisenau\" 
(The radio seemed alive) 

"I shall engage them now." 

17 



*1 shall engage them now." 
(Old sea-dogs of the main! 

Drake, have you kept your vow? 
Sail you the seas again? 

Ah, galleons of Cathay! 

The Dutchman and the Don! 
But when had ye such a day 

As this to die upon?) 

Out of the blood-red West 

The seething combers ran, 
Burying 'neath each crest 

Turret and top and man. 

Main batteries all awash 

From tumble-home to rail, 
Drowning with surge and crash, 

The shrieking of the gale. 

Out-gunned, out-steamed, out-manned, 
He closed with the Prussian crew, 

Closed with a brief command. 
Closed as the English do. 

The Chilean coast looms dark 
Where the Cordillera runs, 

And the spotters had no mark 
Save the flash of German guns. 

A moment — three — "Good Hope," 
Aflame from keel to deck. 

Swerved from the line agrope, 
A plunging, drifting wreck. 

i8 



Her magazines are gone, 
"Monmouth" is sinking fast; 

Shattered and rent, alone, 
"Glasgow" turns south at last. 

And there is no more day, 

Nor any left to fight 
The victors three: Von Spee, 

The hurricane and night. 

Fathom on fathom deep 

"Good Hope" and "Monmouth" lie, 
Where English sailors sleep 

That glory shall not die; 

That faith be kept with Thee 
That willed it, and hast said 

That every utmost sea 

Should coffin England's dead. 

Grenville and Hood and Blake, 

Again the story tell ! 
Brother-in-arms of Drake, 

Craddock at Coronel ! 



19 



SLEEP 

''Sleep, Twin Brother of Death'' — Hesiod. 

Strange that thou would'st deceive us, gentle sleep, 
For thou thyself art full of lightsome rest; 
Yet hast thou a twin brother sably drest, 

And yet so like thee that men ofttimes weep, 

Seeing him in thee, when thou art cold and deep. 
He brings the chilling winds and, in his breast, 
Pale immortality ; but thou art best, 

Thou breath from lands that deathless lovers keep ! 

Yet oft, when in wan dreams my bark doth go, 
Silent along some dim Hesperian shore, 

Half knowing I must wake again to woe, 
I often drift, all careless of the oar. 

And think — and think — until I cannot know " 
H I do love thee or thy brother more. 



20 



HYMN TO PERSEPHONE 

Ad/JL ^ap€^ Il€pa€<f>6va^ rbv ijuibv irdffip iacrl ydp aurd 
noX\6v ifwv Kp€(T<rG)v. to he irdv KoKbv is a^ Karappei. 

— Bion. 

All hail to fond Demeter, 

But thrice all hail to thee, 
That art than Summer sweeter, 

O pale Persephone ! 

Thine be a long thanksgiving. 
That art than Spring more fair ; 

Thou hast no love of living. 
Yet harken to our prayer. 

We may not dwell forever 

Beneath the pleasant sun. 
But thou hast been the giver 

And may thy will be done. 

Yet spare us, spare us, mother ! 

For life and song are dear ; 
And life with thee is other 

Than we have known it here. 

With thee nor vine nor coppice 

Grows, where the birds may sing; 

A weary land of poppies 
Without or sun or Spring. 



21 



The Fates at length shall bear us 
Through thy consuming fire; 

But now, oh mother, spare us 
Life, and our love's desire. 

Quench not the dying ember, 

O wan Persephone ! 
For all that men remember 

Drifts down at length to thee. 



THE LAST VOYAGE 

^'Ma misi me per Valta mare aperto 
Sol con un legno, e con quella compagna 
Picciola, dalla qual non fui deserto." 

—Inferno, XXVI, lOO. 

We sailed, at length, to where that shore-land ends 
Which the unbreasted western billow laves, 

By coasts which rang with voices of lost friends ; 
"Ulysses sails again!" Where Ocean raves, 
Imprisoned in the depths of his sea-caves. 

There rose the echo of some battle-cry : 
"Ulysses," and "Ulysses," and the waves 

Whispering, called ^'Ulysses" in reply. 

Til the last land went down into the morning sky. 

Far, far behind and all forgotten lay 

The sands of home, the lands of wine and corn; 
The moan of bees along the pillared way. 

The glad, low laughter of the Attic morn; 

The clangor of the chase, the dying horn 
That brings the evening when the gods draw nigh : 

Ah, leaving these, were we not well forlorn! 
And yet we sailed, and yet we knew not why. 
Save that, beyond the West, perchance men never 
die. 



23 



I spoke : **0 brother mariners, most dear, 
Too long I sat, too long a useless king 

Beside my idle hearth-stone year by year, 
Gaining no glory ; hearing travelers sing 
No more of Troy and all our wandering; 

Penelope is dead ; lightly the earth will lie 
In Ithaca, that pleasant land of Spring, 

Over so dear, so dear a head: and I 

Sail now to meet my doom below this western 
sky." 

*'For thi5 to me Tiresias promised, 
There in the shades, where the pale asphodel 

Borders the flowerless regions of the dead. 
Thus spake the seer, thus wove his mighty spell : 
Once more in mine own country I should dwell, 

But there no quiet death should come to me, 
In the dear land that I had loved so well. 

But that my death should come out of the sea, 

That noblest death which for us mortal men may 
be." 

**So, seeking fate, with you I seek the West, 
Beyond the sunset, and forget the morn : 

Perchance this Father Ocean on his breast 
Shall bear us to the lands where wander lorn 
Our fathers' spirits or the hosts unborn, 

Where the last slumber and the shades beguile; 
Or, mayhap we shall rest, these days outworn. 

Beyond the deep upon some sunlit isle. 

Laugh, and grow young, and live our life again 
the while." 



24 



Thus I addressed them, or another spoke 
Who blessed the gods ; as from an unseen pyre 

All the day long we heard, out of the smoke, 
Old tales tuned low upon the Lesbic lyre: 
Elysium and the Isles of All Desire, 

Or Argo, buried in an endless night : 
Until it seemed the gods' eternal fire 

Shone at our prow, like glint of helmet bright, 

When Father Phoebus fell, and snatched away the 
light. 

And one would dream again of windy Troy, 

And one of Circe, one the Sirens' shore, 
But most of fatherland and wife and boy, 

And all the glad returning from the war; 

Of hearth, of home, and all the nevermore; 
Yet through that pleasant sadness fell a gleam 

From all the hero-life now past and o'er. 
Yet never longed for; Ah, so sweet did seem 
This dreaming to awake, or waking dream a 
dream ! 

So came we to the land beyond the world. 
Where the last cloud-banks of the twilight 
stand, 
Where Phoebus' golden steeds are never whirled; 
Where, on the utmost verge of Ocean's strand. 
The falling stars dip in the sunset. "Land," 
Was our cry, "The Happy Isles!" Ah then, at 
last. 
That sea, obedient to the Fates' command. 
Like a great gulf rose and o'ertopped our mast, 
And over us the foaming billow roared — and 
passed. 

25 



RHINE MAIDEN 
There sits the cold Rhine Maiden 

Above the haunted tide, 
With laurel garlands laden 

Of heroes who have died. 

Dank osiers bind her tresses, 
(Day-dreams are not more fair) 

The heroes v^^hom she blesses 
In silence she caresses, 

For never sound comes there. 

Silent the waves that waft her 
Along her enchanted sea; 

Music, and dead mens' laughter; 
Deeds that shall fail hereafter, 

And things that cannot be. 

With laurel garlands laden, 
Men offered in their pride, 

Ah, scorn not ours, Rhine Maiden, 
When we too shall have died. 



2^ 



KITCHENER 
(June 5, 1916) 
''So Greatheart passed over, and all the trumpets 
sounded for him on the other side!' 

The German Ocean reaches 
Are gray 'neath northern skies, 

By Orkneys' eastern beaches, 
And there the "Hampshire" lies. 

O soul unspoiled of woman. 

Cleanest of manly clay, 
That brought, despite the foeman, 

An empire into day! 

Searcher of long-lost cities, 

Master of fate and clime. 
Careless of hates and pities, 

Greater than all, save Time! 

Ruling, for England's glory, 

Glacier and tropic sand — 
Omdurman — Ruwenzori — 

Cabul and Samarcand. 

O soul of Empire, keeping 

Her every martial trust! 
O soul of England, sleeping 

With all her martial dust! 



27 



Doubtless that night the conquering blast 

Triumphant took its toll, 
Knowing its fellowship at last 

With his, the Iron Soul. 

And all the trumpets of the deep, 
Where the lone Orkneys frown, 

Blew up, to usher him to sleep. 
When Kitchener went down. 



28 



TO GATHER AND TO SPEND 
Had we been born to gather and to spend, 

To seek the prize which is the common aim; 

Had we not heard the trumpet-call of fame 
Out of the night that shrouds us loud intend, 
(That bugle-call whose wreathed echoes end 

Across the world, to light it flame on flame) 

Ah, then no bitterness of heart should blame 
These years that roll so swiftly to an end. 

Still, let them pass; time runs beyond our ken; 

And here and now as we unwilling go 
Mere busy idlers in the marts of men, 

Fainter and far I hear that trumpet blow. 
Courage! All echoes die at last — Ah, then 

We shall not hear and *twill be better so. 



29 



CONTRADICTIONS 

You loved me not for crown or gold, 
Or glory that is soon forgot, 

Or pomp or power manifold; 
You loved in me what I was not. 

Because, perhaps, I stood apart. 
Seeing a vision half unveiled, 

Lost in the dream that made my art — 
You loved me so because I failed. 

Because, while meaner spirits stood 
Untouched by Pan's eternal spell, 

With the god's fever in my blood. 
You loved me so because I fell. 

Because I asked no sunlight in. 
Because I recked not of the cost, 

Because I aimed too high to win, 
You loved me so because I lost. 



30 



LAMENT FOR ALCIMUS 
(From the Latin of Martial) 

Ah Alcimus, lost, lost through all the years ! 

Whom this lone roadside tomb forever holds, 
Expect no monument save these, my tears, 

For pride alone ashes in marble folds. 

This simple hedge Fll plant, this shadowy vine, 
These meadow flowers watered with my tears : 

Accept, dear one, these memories of mine, 
And let them dwell with thee immortal years. 

And when the Fates appoint mine hour for sleep. 
May I beside thee lie, my dreams as deep. 



31 



THE LORELEI 

Where elfin lights are gleaming, 

Where shadow-ships put by, 
There sits for aye, and seeming 
Weary and full of dreaming, 
The haunted Lorelei. 

Where comes no old world sighing. 
Nor shout nor bugle's blare, 

Save that, from hills low-lying 

Afar, floats in the dying 
And tender Elfland air. 

Bearing the distant thunder 

Of armies in the sun. 
Where kings and captains blunder; 
But here, with thanks, men wonder 

That that is past and done; 

That evermore, unshifting, 

Summers to summers creep, 
Here where, the veil uplifting. 
Their purple dreams go drifting 
Adown the shores of sleep. 

All tapestried her palace. 

The ghostly tides above, 
Heroes in slumbrous valleys. 
Whose stories are a chalice, 

And men shall drink thereof. 



32 



Here by some promontory 

The Argonauts go on, 
And here, full writ, the story 
Of Arthur and his glory, 

Asleep in Avalon: 

Here an old dream is clinging 

Round Barbarossa's pride; 
And here, like distant singing, 
The horns afar are ringing, 
The day that Roland died. 

And half at times believing 

Her shadow-world astir. 
She doth forget her grieving, 
For these are all her weaving. 
And they are parts of her, 

Whose eyes, as if half swooning, 

She droops to lashes long. 
As weary mother's, crooning 
In the still summer nooning. 
Her wordless slumber song. 

We dream our dreams together 

Unsure of everything; 
Of life, oi death, or whether 
For us this autumn weather 

Shall turn again to Spring. 



33 



But this we know securely, 

Though Time and Fate deter, 
That those who love her purely 
Shall see her face, and surely 
Shall come to rest with her. 

Slumber itself shall wake us. 

The Lorelei shall keep. 
And nevermore forsake us. 
For iShe — ^the Soul — shall take us 
To that immortal sleep. 



34 



HOMER 
It seemed there passed a glory from my days 

When I beheld the shores of youth depart: 

It seemed life ended there as, with a start, 
I saw (as, trapped, I struggled in this maze) 
Fast falling landward all that golden haze, 

Wherewith the unseen enwraps the childish 
heart. 

Melt out for over, and my little art 
Go lost amid the moaning ocean ways. 

But when my goodly ship with sails unfurled 
Drew on, and all the breezes seaward blew, 

My self awoke again; all that before 
I had been, still I was; myself anew 
I saw move on, still walking evermore, 
With Homer in the fresh dawn of the world. 



35 



CHICKAMAUGA 

"Let us cross the river and rest in the shade of 
the trees.'* 

Thick rolled the ghostly shadows by the river 
At Chickamauga — stilled the morning breeze; 

Along the marge I saw the aspens quiver 
Like sentinels of death among the trees. 

Like sentinels of death — Ah yes, for ever 
Those crowding footfalls haunt this whispering 
shore, 
Those sunburnt battle-flags advance and waver, 
The brass-lipped batteries wheel and turn once 
more. 

Beyond the half-lit copse I saw you coming, 
(Or were they wraiths that from the river 
curled?) 
The shout, the charge, the shock, the distant 
drumming, 
Immortal infantry that shook a world! 

Speak! Do your fifty summers still remember 
(The twilight freshen and the night bedew) 

The battle-smoke of that long-done September? 
Earth-slumberers now, — do men remember you? 

You, and the long, long thunder of your marching, 
The fitful agony of trench and grave, 

The heartache, and the young Republic watching 
The youth it summoned and the youth you gave ? 

36 



And is there still no voice to hymn your story, 
(Thus long though ye have rested from your 
wars) 

The drums, the wailing trumpets of your glory, 
Eternal bivouackers among the stars? 

Will there no prophet rise, no bard to school us. 
No singer of the splendor of our race? 

How long, how long shall priests of mammon rule 
us. 
The Jew and swineherd of the market-place? 

Hark! All the laurel is a-quiver 

In Paradise (I hear it on the breeze) 

Ah, hero-hearts that rest across the river, 
And slumber in the shadow of the trees ! 



37 



MONA LISA SPEAKS 

Look on me well, yet not too long, I pray; 

The shadow of my smile hath made men mad ; 

I am the heart of youth that oHce was glad, 
I am the soul of all life passed away — 
Glory and triumph, oblivion and decay. 

Therefore I smile as men do who are sad, 

Remembering the dreams that once I had, 
In this immortal twilight of my day. 

Speak not to me ! I slumber ; and meseems 
The sunlight which I dream of shifts and falls 

On still and slumbrous intervales of streams. 
And faery wold 'round gleaming, dream-built 
walls, 

And veiled interspaces, lit with dreams, 
And shadows of old loves along the halls. 



38 



KEATS IN ROME 

You have a little picture on your wall, 

Which I have loved of yore: 
A sandy waste, a spectre gaunt and tall, 

A stately ship no more, 
But ribbed in wreck; and drawing on past all. 

The cruel sea which laps the lonely shore. 

"Pray for my soul," it says, "pray not like mine 

"Thy bark shall thus have lain 
"Lost, lost, its humble freight thy precious shrine 

"Of pleasure and of pain, 
"Ere half its voyage be done — a lost design — 

"Beside the gray, unutterable main/* 



39 



COURAGE 

There is no test l>ut courage. Kings have tried, 
Caesars and popes and lesser men than these, 
With pomp and power, through the centuries, 

To cheat old death and darkness by their pride 

And so to escape. Not thus the martyrs died, 
Lincoln and Wycliffe, Stephen and Socrates, 
But facing, though with doubt and bended knees, 

The fears the human spirit has defied. 

There is no test but courage. When for me 
The purple twilight curtain shall draw back, 
I shall go out unflinching from the day, 
If but some splendid thought my soul shall 
stay : 
High admirals going down in glorious wrack, 
And long-lost sailors sleeping in the sea. 



40 



BALLAD 

Out of the Summer, out of the South 

There rode Sir Belvidere; 
And the song of love was in his mouth, 

In the spring-time of the year. 

* 5{: ;Jt * ^ 

"Lo, I have seven castles old 

Afar in Sicily, 
And thrice three hundred w^arriors bold 

That ride to war with me. 

"Along the laughing southern sands 

My barks at anchor lie; 
But I will see the northern lands 

Before I come to die. 

"Full twenty summers have I seen 

Go by like mountain rills, 
Yet never saw I aught but green 

Upon the western hills. 

"So I will see your winds that blow, 

Your chill November skies, 
Will walk your purple moors and know 

Your twilight in my eyes." 

* * :J: * :|c 

Thus in his will the knight abode, 

Nor suffered change at all; 
By many a storied stream he rode, 

By many a tower and tall; 



41 



By many a city's busy shade, 

By many a fair demesne; 
Through many a sunlit woodland glade, 

Where fairy folk are seen. 

While, as he rode uiK)n his way, 
The clouds came down apace, 

And Summer sweet with Autumn gray 
Died in a last embrace. 

Yet softly did the good knight sing 

Of love and summer dear; 
I wis he heard not anything 

Of moaning in the year. 

S^ 3|C ^ Jf^ ^ 

And now in northern tower and hall 

Passed tale and ruddy cup. 
And song: and laughed the warriors all 

Whenas the horns blew up. 

But all without the wind sang low, 

In no autumnal moan, 
Of days and loves of long ago 

And other autumns flown. 

The wind among the withered sheaves. 

Ah, that was passing drear, 
As rustling of old autumn leaves. 

Along a moonlit mere. 



42 



And yet one voice, o'er lands forlorn, 
Rang out as blithe and clear, 

As lark's on early summer morn, 
Singing that God may hear. 

And closer still his mantle drew 

The good knight on his way, 
And still it seemed no storm that blew 

Might drown his endless lay; 

'Til the last songster of the Spring 

And summer upland wide, 
Came fluttering, like a dying thing, 

Across his path— and died. 

'*** ^ *f* n* ^ 

Into the Summer, into the South 

There rode Sir Belvidere: 
And the song of Spring was in his mouth 

At the dying of the year. 



43 



GLASTONBURY TOR 

Henry of England was a puissant lord; 

He dreamed by the Book, but he lived by the 

sword ; 
He fell upon Glastonbury in his holy war 
And he hanged the last abbot on Glastonbury Tor. 

Winds that blow soft from the shores of Severn 

Sea, 
Larks in the hedgerows, shadows on the lea; 
Gay Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr, 
And the last abbot hanging on Glastonbury Tor! 

Crumbling arches dreaming in the sun, 
Centuries coming and centuries done; 
Launcelot riding on the farther shore. 
And the last abbot swinging on Glastonbury Tor ! 

Sunshine and roses in the Vale of Avalon, 

And the sweetest country-side mine eyes have 

looked upon; 
Arthur and Guinevere and all the nevermore. 
And the last abbot sleeping on Glastonbury Tor ! 



44 



FROM MY WINDOW 

On summer eves when I am most uncertain 

Of truth, and what we are, 
Into my ken, beyond my western curtain, 

Swims the lone evening star. 

Symbol of all things sad and tender-hearted, 

And loves that cannot stay; 
Measure of high romance, now long departed. 

And vanished from the day! 

Slowly, without, the busy city's humming 

Fades into night. O gleam 
That led me once, now fading, and becoming 

An alien to my dream ! 

I may be over given to repining, 

For I have travelled far; 
And yet, for me, another Greece is shining 

Beyond that sunset star. 



45 



SALISBURY CLOSE 

*'He gave his earthly life for such matter as he 
set great store by — the honor of his country and 
his homey — Tennant Memorial, Salisbury Cathe- 
dral. 

Long shadows on this old cathedral green — 
Silence — and Time asleep, or in a trance; 
These thousand years of sacred circumstance 

Breathing, half -felt, over this still demesne 

The living evidence of things not seen. 
God! that war's foul and agonizing dance 
And all the trampled, bloody fields of France 

Should touch a world withdrawn thus and serene ! 

Ah, to have lived thus with him, and to pass 
Thus out of life lived thus complete and whole, 

The legend and the glory — drums and brass — 
Then, like a dawn, the closing of the scroll; 

Eternal sunshine on this English grass, 
And his celestial quiet of the soul. 



46 



THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY 

The Knight he followed the Lady fair, 
By the castle crags toward the haunted dale, 

He followed the gleam of her golden hair 
And he bore in his bosom a wisp of veil. 

The Huntsman cried: "Ride not that way, 
For Death in the valley is waiting for thee!" 

But the Knight rode on and he heard him say : 
"Good Sir, thou never hast ridden with me." 

And the good Knight came to the haunted dell. 
And he kissed the fluttering wisp of veil; 

He paused, — ^breathed deep of the asphodel, 
And he followed the Lady into the dale. 



47 



BALLAD OF EARL BOWINGE 

The flags hung tattered, 
The walls were battered, 

And stained with gore; 
The Danish foemen. 
King 01af*s yeomen, 

Pressed at the door. 

Then spake Earl Walter; 
"Upon the altar 

"Of their god Thor, 
"Must die one being 
"Of us, so freeing us 

"From this war." 

The shouts grew stronger, 
The shadows longer, 

Across the floor; 
Then spake Earl Bowinge: 
"Be mine this going 

"That comes no more." 

"Of all my brothers 
Me, ere the others, 

My mother bore, 
Yet have I broken 
That birth-right token. 

And cost them sore; 
I was forsaken 
And, outlawed, taken, 

Times a score." 

48 



"I never minded 
Your subtly-blinded 

Makers of lore, 
For all my lovers 
Were the sea-rovers, 

And to soar 
Over tumbling surges, 
Singing dirges, 

To their roar" ; 

"Pulling together. 
Through northern w^eather, 

The flashing oar; 
And all to follow 
The gray sea-swallow. 

That fled before." 

*T never hearkened. 
When shadows darkened 

On Bowinge Tor, 
To whispered stories 
Of all the glories 

Of which Christ swore"; 

"I heard the sighing 
Of the Norns, crying 

By the lone sea-shore. 
And in the thunder 
I called in wonder 

On Father Thor." 



40 



"Then, brothers, marry 
Why should I tarry? 

(Or you deplore?) 
For though they slay me, 
Yet this shall stay me, 

(My soul restore) 
Being me man's debtor, 
To have died better 

Than lived of yore/' 

"And though on laughter, 
And days hereafter, 

I set no store, 
Yet for my living 
I yield thanksgiving 

From my heart's core." 

"And I shall slumber. 
And shall not number 

The seasons o'er. 
Having descended 
Where light is ended, 

And life no more." 



50 



THE SEAFARER 
(From the Anglo Saxon.) 

Then he awakes again, 

Friendless mortal, 

To see, spread before him, 

The Avan sea pathway. 

The sea birds soaring, 

Spreading their wings, 

Rime and snow falling, 

Mingling with hail. 

Then weigh the heavier 

All his heart's sorrows, 

Drear after dreaming. 

Sorrow revives 

When memories of friends 

Come crowding to mind. 

He greets them with gladness, 

Warm is his welcome; 

But his warrior comrades 

Melt misty away: 

And the souls of these sea-farers 

Bear with them hither 

No message remembered. 



51 



FRIENDSHIP 

Meseemed I passed, when days were at an end, 
Hard by the Tree of Life, along a stream 
Whose course far, far away as in a dream 

With glistening city walls did meet and blend; 

Whither a white-robed throng did with me wend, 
Happy with gazing there, each eye agleam. 
And one to stop and smile on me did seem, 

And clasp my shadowy hand and call me friend. 

He spoke. His voice rang hollow in mine ears. 
I stood as one that watches by the sea 

For the lost ship that bears him son or wife, 
(Hearing and dreaming more than that he hears) : 

*'Hast thou forgot the crust thou sharedst with 
me, 

"The cup of water in that other life?" 



52 



AN EPITAPH 

Not his the will to gather 

What others may have sown, 
In other years, but rather, 
To fight his fight alone. 

To tread the path of duty, 
As soldier, priest and sage; 

And trim the lamp of Beauty, 
In a material age. 



53 



ill! 




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